Why Valentine
by Lizabeth Grey
Summary: "Then, pausing to let the substance of her words sink in, he turned to her and asked 'What'" Helena/AlternaValentine. Title is lame, but will do. Chapters are very short.
1. Chapter 1

"You'd have made a terrible waiter."

The boy, the young man with the spiky hair and the familiar lilt to his voice, the one holding now onto one of her red-and-black leather juggling balls, laughed along with her joke. Then, pausing to let the substance of her words sink in, he turned to her and asked "What?"

She put a finger to her mouth to stifle her mirth, but it shone apple bright in her eyes. "Inside joke," she clarified, and he nodded, obviously still not quite getting it.

"I was a waiter!" he cried, astounded. "I was a terrible waiter! I got fired. Oh--" and his voice dropped low. "Best not tell your _lovely_ mother that."

"I'll let you break that news to her. During your interview?"

He tossed the ball into the air, let it make a break for the beetle black sky before snatching it back down thoughtfully. "I think I'll really try it. I mean, you would think with so much experience juggling knives and fire and other dangerous things," he glanced at her subtly, to see if she was impressed, but she gave no indication, "It would be easy enough to juggle trays and meal orders, but it's just not the life for me. This, now..." And with a glance around the crowd, his eye caught at the attractive woman in the ticket booth, shooting a disapproving look in his direction, and he seemed suddenly to realise that he had been talking too much and too fast, taking up this unknown girl's time for too little reason. He really wouldn't like to get kicked out of the circus before he got a chance to join it.

With a deferential bow, he stretched his long arms to the ground, to find the missing red and black orbs and hold them out to her. "I'm terrible sorry, I knock you over and talk your ear right off, and while you're on the job."

She did not reach for them, sensing perhaps the finality that move would bring to the conversation. "Without even introducing yourself," she corrected.

"Without even that. I don't seem to selling myself much as a juggler, dropping my manners everywhere. I'm--"

"Let me guess," she interrupted, putting a finger to a temple. "Val?"

"Not even close. I guess you're not the fortune teller I thought you were."

Her brow creased, as if she was actually surprised at her guess missing the mark.

"Or are you?" He asked in a headlong rush of breath, hoping not to have offended her more. "It's okay, really, I'm told I'm hard to read."

"You're a very important man..." she muttered, just audible. Then, louder, "Makes sense, I suppose. I'm not called Dark Princess in this world either."

He gave her a look.

He turned to take in the red and gold of the crowd, the milling bodies and faces, the neon green glow and stale popcorn smell, and then he gave her the same look again. The balls rolled and shone in his hand, and he picked one out to toss to her. She caught it and automatically threw it back. Another dropped out of the air in her direction, and she caught it and it, too, flew from her hand. Soon they had set an easy rhythm between them, and the hum and soft _thwap_ set up a steady tempo for the fiddle and the voices to work to.

"Sean" He said, finishing his sentence of earlier.

"I'm Helena," she replied.

_____________

More to this later, though it'll be more a series of vignettes, I guess, than a full plot. Sorry if there seem to be confusing phrasing or missing words... it's intentional, actually. I've been reading a lot of Ray Bradbury, if that explains it.


	2. Chapter 2

Their juggling act progressed quickly, they worked naturally together. Their friendship, too. It was as if she had accepted that they should be friends before she had even met him.

She would say the oddest things on occasion. When he asked "are you thinking what I'm thinking?" expecting a reply of "curry," instead he would get one about wheels on shoes.

In between juggling and the work he did manning the ticket booth or sweeping the remains of a show from the aisles, they would lie on the floor of her trailer, and he would hand her pencils while she drew. She was dedicated to the drawing. It spanned her walls and in corners even the floor. Out of costume there were always graphite smudges on her cheeks and her fingers were black as pitch.

She tried to explain it to him once. "I've got to make it interesting for them, of course"

At the time he was too busy smirking at a particularly bad smudge on the side of her nose.


	3. Chapter 3

"What's this?" It was light, and spiky, and shaped rather like a half-dish.

"It's your mask!"

"I'm not sure I'll be able to see through these holes." Nevertheless, he put the mask on and his vision seemed to open up in front of him, to sharpen and deepen.

She gathered cream makeup in white and grey, and started to cover the lower half of his face with it. A thick stripe vertically across his lips which had the sweet, numbing tang of aloe to it. When she was done, greasy fingertips still resting against his chin, she looked at him and said "I miss you."

He wanted to ask what she meant, but in the moment she looked so sad that he couldn't say a thing, only lean forward to kiss her swiftly, on the lips.

"Nerves", he said, as if that were a sensible explanation. Then, only thinking of a better one after the fact, he added it in hopes that she wouldn't notice. "For luck."

"For luck" she nodded. (And it seemed her sorrow had been scared off… so at whatever cost to his pride, he deemed the act worth it.) She wiped the grey on her fingers and lips onto a towel stained already with red and orange and green.


	4. Chapter 4

Her own mask was heavy. Bits of glass reflected only the blueish light of the backstage, except when he thought he caught his own reflection in it, like a ghost. He felt as pale as the costume he wore.

In the dark, with her body wrapped in black tatters, she looked like nothing more than a floating, mirrored face.

"Okay, then," She said, "Here we go!"

The curtain swept aside, taking his stomach with it. The spotlights, at least, were bright enough to hide the expressions in the audience. Her mask shone shattered and ice white in the glare, and it set off a feeling of familiarity… the same he had felt when he first bumped into her. The same he felt lying on her floor talking among crayons and coal and white lines on black and black lines on white. He focused on it, the light and the feeling, and followed as she swept into the ring like a bird.


	5. Chapter 5

"May I ask you a question?"

"Yes?"

"Why Valentine?"

She had been calling him by another name almost since they first met. _Valentine_, sometimes _Her Valentine_. Sometimes she would sing to him, "My funny Valentine, sweet comic Valentine." At first it would slip out, but when he didn't object, she started to use it regularly. He trusted it was an inside joke… one of many. He never minded, but he often wondered.

"You remind me of someone I knew."

"Ah," he said. "Ah." And, in a bit, "I was hoping it was because you liked me."

"I do like you," she said, rather obviously.

He smiled his sideways smile to match her own straight one. "But I'm no Valentine."

"Only you are! Sort of... I've been trying to say…" She took his hand, picked up an eye pencil from the dressing table beside him, and started to draw as she told him.

"I once had a dream," she said, laying down soft lines. In between marks of the pencil, her breath brushed his fingertips. "And in the dream, I met a man named Valentine, who wore a mask." She added the mask, lightly smudging a grey line down his palm with her finger. "A very important man. He helped me on a quest, but sold me out to the dark queen for an armful of rubies."

"Some man," he interrupted.

"Hush." her brow creased as she sketched a mouth, a spiky chin. "But he came back, and he saved me."

The eyes came last, two small dots. "I loved him, and I miss him," she kissed the drawing on his palm, and looked up. "And he was you."

His mask had been on, still, so he took it off. "Would I sell you for an armful of rubies?"

"You might, but you would always come back."

He considered this, weighing the mask in one hand against the drawing in another.

"You're a rather strange girl." he said.

"I am."


End file.
